by K. Bromberg
I remind myself of all the reasons this is a bad idea. How in two days he’s going to leave and go back to his life in Hollywood, and I’ll return to my mixer and ovens and passion. Alone.
So I try to bring us back to the playful part of us. The neutral zone.
“You’re right,” I murmur, a taunting smile on my lips, and a scrunch of my nose. “Not enough cream.”
I more than notice Hayes’s expression: mischief to match mine, challenge, disbelief.
And it’s only a fraction of a moment, a split second of time where we let spontaneity take over, and the kids we used to be emerge. In a frenzy of activity, we both scramble up from the bench and grab the remaining cupcakes from the box. Our laughter floats around us like the rustle of the palm leaves in the breeze. We’re armed and ready for a cupcake war.
He strikes next. A pink frosted one that glances off of my shoulder. My yelp rings out above the waves on the beach. His footsteps behind me tell me he’s given chase down the pathway. I turn a bend where he can’t see me and dart in between a break in the hedge. Just as he passes me, I jump out and smash a vanilla frosted cupcake square against his back.
“Still a little shit all these years later, Ships.” He laughs out the insult as we circle each other like dogs with smiles on our faces, lungs out of breath, and intention in our movements.
“Hmm, you forget how fast I am, Whitley?” I lunge toward him, ready to strike, and he jumps back. We continue this dance until I take one step too many and he grabs my arm and twists me against him, my back to his front.
“I think you forget how strong I am.”
I don’t even have a second to prepare before he lands a cupcake to my collarbone. And with his body behind me and his hand against me, I definitely feel his strength. Using his leverage, he takes his hand and purposely smears the cupcake against my skin and bathing suit.
“You asshole!” I shriek in jest as I escape the confines of his arms and chase after him down the footpath.
He taunts me from ahead. You’re such a wimp. You can’t catch me. How do you like them apples, huh, Say?
“You’re dead meat,” I call after him as we weave in and out of paths. I chuck a cupcake at him from behind, and it bounces off the back of his neck.
“Close but no cigar,” he heckles as I scoop up the dropped cupcake for a reloadable weapon and continue down the path to where he disappeared.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I call when I can’t find him. With a cupcake in one hand, my sarong gathered up in my other hand, and an enthusiastic smile on my lips, I search through breaks in the foliage to find his hiding spot.
I yelp when hands grab my waist from behind and spin me around. “Olly olly oxen free,” he whispers as he cocks his arm back and aims the cupcake at my face.
“No!” The sound is part laughter, part warning. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
We playfully struggle our way into a clearing. There’s laughter around us. I’m sure we are quite the sight—two grown adults covered in various colors of frosting having an epic battle—yet I don’t think once to care. My only focus is the cupcake in Hayes’s hand.
I hear my name. I think I do anyway, and it distracts me enough momentarily that Hayes is able to grab and pull me tighter into him, the cupcake now inches from my face.
We stare at each other in a silent standoff, hearts racing and eyes daring. His gaze flickers over my shoulder and then back to mine as I prepare myself for the smash.
But it doesn’t come.
Instead he eases up and only dabs the frosting against the tip of my nose.
I sigh in relief.
Then gasp out in shock.
Because Hayes’s lips are on mine.
And not just a friendly peck. Not hardly. The hand that held the cupcake is now empty. Chocolate fallen by the wayside for a kiss. His fingers, sticky with frosting, are on my cheeks directing my face. But there’s no thought of the frosting he’ll get on my face or how funny it’s going to look when we walk back to our villa because all I can think about is Hayes.
I could tell myself I part my lips—grant him access—because I’m winded and need to breathe, but that would be a lie. Because the minute his tongue dances against mine, all I want to do is drown in his kiss. In the familiarity of it. In the difference of it. The unexpectedness of it. The comfort of it. In everything about him.
Hayes Whitley is kissing me. Again.
Finally.
His fingers are possessive—on the underside of my jaw and the small of my back—and the soft groan he emits communicates everything his lips are expressing and more.
His taste consumes me. The chocolate on his tongue. The spark of desire. The lick of lust. The sense of calm riled up by an overload of emotion.
My hands slide up the plane of his back over skin heated by the sun and slick with frosting. His muscles bunch beneath my palms as he shifts the angle of the kiss.
His tongue tantalizes and torments. Begs me to want more with its tender caresses and then switches gear and demands me to keep pace. To allow him to possess and claim.
I feel in droves. Want. Need. Lust. More. Too much. Not enough. Don’t ever stop. What am I doing?
And as much as I should be panicked, as much as I should be thinking about what all this means and how I already know I’m going to get hurt somehow, I don’t. Instead I lose myself in the kiss. Surrender myself to him. The guests and the staff I heard moments ago no longer exist.
It’s just me.
And Hayes.
And the singular sensation of rightness he is making me feel. A sensation I don’t think I had ever realized was missing since he’d left, but now know I’ll never be able to live without.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
Soft lips. Skilled tongue. That little moan.
Did I really walk away from this? From her? Why?
Goddamn it, Saylor.
I kissed her because I saw them looking.
I kissed her because I wanted there to be no doubt who she was with, and the status of our nonexistent relationship.
I kissed her because it’s been too damn tempting not to, and so why not when it was the perfect opportunity?
And fuck, now I don’t want to come up for air. I just want to stand right here with this woman who owns every sensation within me. The one coated in frosting who left the pain behind and is currently pressed against me. The one whose laughter I can hear still in that sweet goddamn moan she made and whose taste I don’t think I ever forgot.
How could I?
Her fingers press into my back. Little scrapes of her nails to let me know this is real. Not some movie set. Not ten years ago in the tree house with my letterman jacket on the floor beneath her. But here in paradise with the smell of suntan lotion on her skin and the tickle of the breeze blowing her hair onto my cheeks.
I’m in two minds. Two sets of thoughts struggling to be heard through the roar of want that’s firing in my blood. One begs me to drag her off to the villa and see what else is the same and different about her all this time later. Dip between her thighs and have a taste. Feel her pussy grip around my cock and hear my name pant on her lips when she comes.
I deepen the kiss. Grip her jaw tighter and take what I want from her because, fuck if taking her right now on the putting green isn’t a possibility.
My sensibility fights back. Tells me this can’t happen. Saylor is Saylor with her little cupcake shop and her own dreams, and I’m just the asshole who lives in Hollywood with a life so different than hers that it would never work. I’d only hurt her again in the end. And she’s had enough hurt lately.
I want to tell my mind to shut the fuck down. To let my dick do the talking. The one that’s currently pressed against the warmth of her bare belly.
I have to end the kiss for my own fucking sanity. And because I’m pretty sure there are laws against having sex in public. I fight the urge to dive back in and deepen the kiss. To give in to
my need and take what I want.
But I don’t. Can’t. This isn’t about me.
This is about Ships and making things right.
So I take one last draw on her lips. One last nip of the forbidden fucking fruit I want more than I thought I would but now realize I shouldn’t have. And end the kiss.
But I don’t let her go just yet. I know how hard quitting Saylor cold turkey can be. Recall the burn in my gut that lasted for almost a year. Gut? More like heart. And then I realize that it probably took even longer since every one of those feelings just came back with a vengeance after a single damn kiss.
So I hold onto her and steal one more moment. Take one more draw of the same breath. Let my mind stumble through memories of the past we shared and be thankful our paths have crossed again.
“Now I know why I’ve always compared every woman I’ve ever kissed to you.” The words are out before I can stop them. A confession I never should have made but now can’t seem to purge from my mind.
Her breath hitches. Fingers flex against my skin. And then the murmurs of those around us provide the reason I need to take a step back. Break the hold she has on me. Play the part I came here to play.
And when I do break our connection, she still holds me captive. I take in her full lips, the frosting smudged on her cheeks, and read the confusion in her eyes. The perfect goddamn combination of sexy, sweet and uniquely Saylor standing before me slaps me in the face and begs to know how I could have been so stupid to walk away from her.
Shut it down, Whitley. Keep your distance. End the scene.
I remind myself to breathe and force a smirk instead of stepping back into her. To get my wits about me and refocus on if the twenty or so members of the wedding party across the green are still watching. The ones I caught sight of while Saylor and I were having our cupcake war.
And they are definitely watching.
“C’mon. Let’s go.” I grab her hand and steer her from where curious eyes continue to stare. To wonder. To judge. And I want them to question how the woman they knew her to be, the one Ryder explained to me as being so proper and reserved over the past six years, has enough of a wild streak in her to chase a man through a posh resort and have a food fight with him.
Not just any man, though. Me.
But my desire to head back to the villa has a helluva lot more to do with me than with her right now. I need to work. Because work has always allowed me to forget about Saylor, and God, how I need to forget about her right now. Because with her within arm’s length, with her taste on my lips, with the warmth of her body still heating my skin, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep the one promise I made to myself when I agreed to come here: leave her better off than how I found her.
“Hayes?” Her voice is confused, the amusement it was rich with now gone. It takes me a second to realize she had no idea we were being watched. And I’m so goddamn self-absorbed, so mad at myself for wanting to do the right thing, that I forgot to tell her.
“Sorry. We had company.” I stop on the path and turn to look at her to make sure she heard me.
“What? Wh—oh.” Realization hits her eyes, a healthy dose of hurt too, as I let her assume the sole reason I kissed her was because there was an audience and not because I wanted to. She clears her throat and lifts her chin in a show of false bravado. “Yes. I know. I saw them.”
She’s lying. She wanted the kiss just as much as I did. The twirl of her finger around her hair and the stiffening of her body prove she did, but for some reason I don’t elaborate or correct her line of thinking.
Instead I stand there like an asshole as she forces a smile to save herself the embarrassment over thinking what happened was out of mutual desire. And that she threw herself into the kiss—and fuck me, how she threw herself into the kiss—for no other reason than to help sell our fake relationship to the wedding party.
That in itself is comical because we both wanted it. There’s no denying that. And yet I don’t correct her. I don’t confess how sleeping in the villa last night with her in the bedroom directly across from mine was the sweetest kind of torture. Or explain how rehearsing the scene this morning didn’t make me wonder about and want her in every way imaginable. And I definitely don’t tell her how badly I want to drag her up against me right now and kiss her all over again.
But I don’t say a word because the next time I touch her, I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop with just a kiss. And I’m not sure it’s smart to open up that door until I can figure out what in the hell I’m going to do about keeping that damn promise I made myself.
“C’mon,” I murmur, turning around before I can see that wounded pride in her eyes again. The one I put there. “I’ve got stuff I need to do before . . . I booked you a private massage in the spa room down from our villa.” I glance at my watch to emphasize she’s going to be late. Hate myself for pawning her off so I can have a minute—or sixty—to get my head straight.
“I don’t wa . . .” Blue eyes full of unanswered questions meet mine and the words die on her lips.
“It’s that way.” I point. “See you in a bit.”
I walk off down the path, like the asshole I am. I tell myself not to stop and turn back. Not to grab her hand or open the door of the villa, lick that frosting off her chest, and slide down the slippery slope that would follow.
And it would surely follow. No doubt in my mind there.
But it’s not meant to be. Can’t happen. I’m here to make sure she’s okay and pulling her into any part of my crazy life would lead to anything but okay. So why do my hands falter as I slide the key card in the door? Because ten years have passed. Because I’m a different man now than I was then, and she is without doubt a different woman. She’s stronger. Independent. She’s Saylor.
So why couldn’t something work now?
Fuck. That’s the shit I can’t be thinking. The one thing I came here telling myself wasn’t going to happen. Because what was supposed to happen was that we were going to live in the same villa for a few days and remember old times. I was hoping to help her restore her confidence, prove a point to the Layton groupies, and then walk away when the time was up as friends—something few and far between for me these days.
How’s that working for you, Whitley?
Kind of hard to remain impartial when everywhere we go, assholes from the wedding have stared at her. She may not have noticed them—so busy with her eyes wide at the tropical scenery around us—but I sure as shit did. I saw the packed tables in the back corner of the karaoke bar—eyes glued, tongues wagging, noses turned up. But they did take notice of who she was with. Then the halt of conversation and turning of heads as we walked by the pool earlier today—the floppy hats being lifted so they could stare a little longer from behind their sunglasses and grimace over that girl from the other side of town as I heard one of them mutter. And of course then again, in the bar a while ago. The pairs of eyes looking over the edge of menus, ready to whisper the minute I turned my attention from them and back to her.
But the joke’s on them. I’m not fucking stupid and have played this game perfectly in her defense. Made sure I’m loud so it’s noticed that I’m here at the resort. Looked like an egotistical fucker throwing my name around, when typically, I use an alias to go incognito so I can enjoy my time off rather than be constantly wary of the sly pictures taken on cell phones or time interrupted when asked for autographs.
But this weekend is for Saylor. Not me. My way of easing my guilt from all those years ago. My need to make sure she’s okay because as tough as she is, I can still see the hurt she’s hiding behind her gutsy façade. It seems that fucker, Mitch, has put her through the wringer.
So yeah. I’ll throw my name around. Take my time eating our meals in the wide-open bar. Sit beside her poolside and sip some cocktails. Go to the hottest spots in town when I know the whole wedding party will be there just to make sure there is no mistaking we’re a couple.
If I’m famous, I
might as well put it to good use in her favor.
Besides, I’ve got my publicist on the ready. She’s already issued statements to the press stating I’m taking a little R&R after wrapping the last film to hang out with an old childhood friend. I certainly haven’t felt the normal hairs on the back of my neck when I sense an intrusive lens aimed in my direction, which has been incredibly freeing.
Kissing Saylor in public was a stupid mistake on my part, but hell if I expected any of this—the feelings, the connection, wanting to kiss her senseless—to happen when I offered to bring her here in the first place. But she was far too tempting not to taste.
I shake the thought from my head, certain that this little bubble around us in this all-inclusive resort will remain intact. And just as I know it will, I also know that our simple kiss won’t change the wedding party’s thoughts of her.
They’ll still judge her and thumb their snooty noses at her. And since she’s going to be judged, I’ll make sure they see the real her. The laughing, funny, spontaneous girl I used to know. The one whose friendship they’re missing due to their arrogance and exclusivity.
The irony? I’m realizing how much I missed out on it too.
Thank fuck I’m an actor, can play the part like nobody’s business, because I’ve just fooled both the audience watching across the green and, by the hurt in her eyes, Saylor herself. And maybe even myself.
They think I want her.
She thinks I don’t.
I know I want her.
I know I can’t.
Now I know why I’ve always compared every woman I’ve ever kissed to you.
I cream the butter and sugar together. Do it by hand and forgo the perfectly capable mixer sitting on the counter behind me because I need the physicality of it. The therapy it provides.
The comment repeats in my mind. Confounds me. If the kiss was for show, why did he make that comment? I’m so confused. And right alongside my confusion sits my sexual frustration.
